


Brother and the Beast

by kashmir



Category: The OC
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-19
Updated: 2006-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-22 02:58:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/233010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashmir/pseuds/kashmir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan kinda drifts for awhile after the whole Marissa died in his arms thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brother and the Beast

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I blatantly ignored the canon of S4 for this fic. And since I missed the last half of S3, I kinda fudged what I knew about that, too. So yeah. Very much an AU.  
> 2\. Ryan has my class schedule from my first semester at UPJ, down to the 8 am Intro to Soc. class with the head of the department. Yes, he really dressed like that.  
> 3\. I wanted Anna to make an appearance in this fic, which is really why Ryan picks UPJ of all places to attend school. The majority of the students at UPJ are from Pittsburgh so it's entirely plausible for her to attend UPJ and it really is a gorgeous, gorgeous campus.  
> 4\. The Warhol Museum, Primanti Brothers, The Oaks, as well as Kings, are all real places.  
> 5\. The whole Anna/Ryan interaction/fuck buddies thing is total wish fulfillment for me and I will OPENLY admit that. :)  
> 6\. This is the longest OC fic I've ever written. I kinda missed playing in this world. Who knew?

Ryan kinda drifts for awhile after the whole Marissa died in his arms thing. He gets even more quiet, blames himself, angsts - the usual Ryan Atwood routine. He starts drinking, thinks Sandy knows about the vodka and SoCo he sneaks into the pool house but doesn't say anything, just raises those bushy eyebrows when Ryan shuffles in bleary eyed and smelling a bit sour in the mornings.

One night at the end of June, Seth shows up in the pool house doorway. He just stands there, watching Ryan as he takes a sip from the bottle of Jack - he'd changed it up recently to Jack and Jose - wearing only a pair of boxer briefs. Seth had been almost as quiet as Ryan the past month, which you know, was totally not normal for Seth Cohen. If Ryan wasn't so fucked up himself, he thinks he'd be really worried. Seth is... Seth is Seth and he's the most important person in Ryan's life.

Ryan isn't sure if Seth is being quiet because of Ryan and he's giving Ryan his own space to grieve or what-the-fuck-ever or if Seth himself is just as affected by Marissa’s death as everyone else. Summer fucked off to Europe for... who knows how long. College didn't seem to be in her plans now. Luke was Luke, they hardly ever spoke but he had come to the funeral and cried a little on Ryan's stoic shoulder. Sandy and Kirsten were Sandy and Kirsten and Julie Cooper-Nichols-Roberts was, reportedly, spending time with family back East but everyone knew that was code for Neil 'totally locked her ass up in some sanitarium somewhere or some shit because she has totally lost her mind.'

Or at least that's what Summer said when they took her to the airport and right before she told Seth they needed a 'break.'

So yeah. Ryan had no idea what Seth's particular deal was right now but he wasn't about to ask, either. Talking was not his style.

Ryan was, however, kinda pleasantly surprised (not to mention pleasantly buzzed) when Seth shut the pool house door and locked it and stripped down to his own underwear. He grabbed the half-empty bottle of Jack from Ryan's limp grasp and took a healthy swallow, hardly grimacing. Ryan watched him with a slightly disinterested gaze until Seth fucking got on the bed and straddled Ryan's lap. Ryan tried to sit upright, sputtered a bit but Seth pushed him back with one hand while the other worked on getting rid of Ryan's underwear.

Ryan admitted to himself as he watched Seth get them both naked, all without ever kissing that he'd known this was coming for a long time now. Probably since that first day when he sat down in the Cohen’s living room to play video games with him. Seth and Ryan had a special connection if Ryan wanted to be honest with himself (and in his drunken haze he decided why the hell not) and part of that connection was definitely physical attraction. So yeah. Not so surprised that this was actually happening.

Although Ryan always kinda figured he'd be the one to make the first move and while he might be drinking at the time, he didn't figure for being so drink he was worried he wouldn’t be able to get it up at all. But he can get it up and Seth starts working his cock like a pro and he forgets all the reasons why this is the wrong time, why this will more than likely fuck everything up even further for everyone, why he should stop Seth and send him back to the house.

He forgets and just lets Seth frantically rub their cocks together. Lets Seth kiss him with too much tongue as they both come, Ryan groaning low in his throat and Seth with Ryan's name escaping his mouth and falling into Ryan's.

Ryan falls asleep almost immediately afterwards, one arm curled around Seth's slim shoulders as Seth buries his nose in Ryan's neck. Ryan knows they should clean up, he should make Seth go back in the house, maybe even freaking TALK but he just lets himself slip under and doesn't wake up until late the next day, when the sun is high in the sky and everyone but Ryan is out. There is a note from Kirsten explaining her and Sandy are at some sort of Newpsie function and won't be back until late, to ‘please take care, call the cell if you need anything, Ryan.’ Ryan smiles to himself at the love she manages to display in simple mundane words on a post-it and then just as soon loses his smile when he remembers what the hell he did with Kirsten's REAL son last night.

Seth, who is nowhere to be found in the house, is not answering his cell and did not leave a note. Ryan shrugs after searching the whole house for him and digs out a box of Apple Jacks and sits down in front of the TV to watch a marathon of that Battlestar something or other show Seth loves on Sci Fi.

...

Ryan doesn't see Seth for two days after The Incident, as he has taken to calling it in his head. Caps and all. It's not like Seth is avoiding him. It just. Ryan has no idea what it just is. He does his thing and apparently Seth is off doing his own thing elsewhere and Ryan's starting to get a bit worried.

But that Friday they all sit down to have dinner together, Thai takeout and Seth is... Seth. More normal than he's been in a long while and Ryan is relieved. He'd done some thinking that Thursday, while slowly baking on a raft in the pool all afternoon, that he really did want what had gone on with Seth in the pool house that night. But he didn't want it right now, not when he was still so screwed up over... fucking everything. Ryan cared about Seth too much to do that to him. And he was going to tell him.

He was.

But then Seth was so fucking SETH at dinner that night and Ryan just went back to the pool house after they ate and purposely left the door open and laid on his bed reading Vonnegut until fucking four am but Seth never comes out and Ryan flings the book down on the floor and shuts off the light and figures Seth is just gonna chalk it up to drunken grief.

Ryan punches his pillow and tries to convince himself he can live with that.

...

Two weeks later, in the midst of brooding about Seth, Ryan realizes college and like, LIFE aren't that far off and he might have a slight panic attack at the thought. He's suddenly rethinking the whole Berkley thing, even though he knows how much it’d mean to Sandy if even just ONE of his kids went there. He manages to corner Sandy one day in his office and blurts it all out, his anxiety, the second thoughts, everything. Sandy is Sandy and tells him that yeah, he'll be disappointed but that Ryan has to do what he feels is right for him. And that Kirsten and Sandy will support him no matter what. Sandy is also sure to make it clear that whatever is right for Ryan had better include college. Ryan smiles and feels much better, better than he has in days.

He goes home that afternoon and throws out all the liquor bottles in the pool house and starts researching schools in the East online. He loves his family but he really thinks he needs to get as far away from Newport as he can.

Pennsylvania, he decides six hours later, seems just the place.

...

Seth hardly talks to Ryan anymore. Sure, he makes small talk over bagels and cereal or Lo Mien or whatever but. Ever since The Incident, as Ryan is still calling it, Seth has been stand-offish with him. Ryan is kinda sad but is still so fucked up, despite his recent decision to move to the East coast, that he doesn't do anything, just kinda broods about it and lets Seth go. Which he knows is wrong but whatever. Ryan can only deal with so much and he figures maybe it's better this way. Seth is going to be in Rhode Island soon and he'll meet all other sorts of people that are more like him than Ryan could ever hope to be and he'll move on. They'll both move on and that night will just be forgotten.

Or so Ryan hopes. Because whatever it was or whatever it meant to Seth, Ryan's beginning to think it meant more to him. And he's not ready to deal with how _that_ makes him feel.

...

He decides at the end of July to not go to Berkley. Sandy is a bit upset but not surprised. Seth shows no reaction one way or the other. Kirsten seems a bit melancholy when Ryan reveals his plans to apply to the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, some completely out of the way school in some small town. She makes some sort of comment about both her boys being too far away and then gets a look in her eyes like she could so with some merlot and Ryan feels a twinge but knows he has to get the fuck out of Dodge, Newport - whatever. He also figures a small school in a small town - what kinda trouble could he get into there, really?

All he wanted was some peace and quiet. He figures the woods of Pennsylvania will be perfect.

...

He gets his acceptance letter for the spring semester the same day Seth leaves for school and they give each other a manly-barely-touching hug at the airport. Ryan can't help but remember the look on Seth's face when he came all over Ryan's stomach two months before back in the pool house as he watches Seth hug his parents.

Seth promises to call and e-mail and write or whatever and then he's gone. One less body in the Cohen house.

Ryan sits in the dark of the pool house that night, wishing for some alcohol or maybe just some babble or god, even some of Seth's comic books.

Or maybe just Seth.

...

He finally passes out around six am and sleeps until noon. He doesn't feel any better when he wakes up though. He gets up and shuffles into the kitchen and eats some cereal while watching some show on real women giving birth or some shit on TLC. It's a show that Summer always used to force them to watch and Ryan can't be bothered to get up and change the channel when the automatic timer goes off and switches from his movie -Die Hard- to A Baby Story.

He eats his Frosted Mini Wheat and thanks whoever is listening that he doesn't have a vagina.

...

The next day, Ryan is up way too early. He eats breakfast with Sandy and Kirsten and decides to get a job, start saving up money for when he goes to school. He finds one as a busboy in some dive of a Mexican restaurant and the pay kinda sucks but whatever. It's not like he really has to worry about the money, Sandy and Kirsten won't let him starve or anything while at school and the school he’s attending now costs a whole let less than UC Berkeley but he can't just sit around and do nothing for four months until he leaves.

He starts work the day after that, long twelve hour shifts and makes shitty money doing crap work. He doesn't do anything outside of work, has no one TO do anything with outside of work and he finds out he doesn't mind all that much. On his days off, he does things around the house for Kirsten or goes with her on these long shopping trips she insist he go on while they buy for things to outfit his freshmen dorm. He really doesn't care if he sleeps on striped or plain sheets but goes because Kirsten wants him to, not because he feels he owes her. He got over that long ago, when he realized he was truly a part of the family and not just the stray they'd adopted.

One day, they're in some store looking for a fridge or something and he realizes as he watches her compare three different brands that as much as he has a special relationship with Sandy, he's going to miss Kirsten just as much.

He pushes down the urge to hug her - in public of all places - and smirks to himself, thinking maybe there is more than a little WASP in him after all.

...

September and October come and go and Ryan, while still not feeling like he did before graduation night, feels like maybe he can finally deal with all the shit that went down.

Well, the whole Marissa thing anyway. He knows he'll always carry some guilt and whatever for her but. He finds it easier to not think about it each day or to at least not dwell as much.

Besides, he has that whole 'Seth hasn't called him once since August and this was the longest they'd ever gone without talking since before they met' thing to dwell and worry and brood and angst about now.

Either Seth was really busy and loving Brown or... Ryan had no idea what the or was but he really didn't want there to be one at all, either.

....

Seth doesn't come home for Thanksgiving, which sends Kirsten into a slight depression and Sandy snipes at her and Ryan for a week. Ryan just works overtime at the restaurant and spends as much time in the pool house as possible.

Thanksgiving is a terse and quiet affair and Ryan never realized before just how much Seth was pretty much the life of the house until he wasn't there anymore. Ryan figures that makes him not just unobservant but kinda stupid as well and a shitty friend. Brother. Or. Whatever he was to Seth. Brother was a little too incestuous considering.. Considering.

Ryan lays awake that night, wondering if the excuse Seth fed his parents about needing to stay to get some sort of paper written was true or if The Incident and Ryan's inability to you know, TALK like a person sometimes was really why Seth was in Rhode Island and Sandy was at work and Kirsten was probably crying herself to sleep.

Ryan sighed and realized he was kinda an ass.

...

Seth comes home for winter break and Kirsten is ecstatic. Seth looks the same as he did the day he left in August and has tons of stories about Brown and Providence and comics and movies and the Death Cab show him and some people went to in 'freakin' Manhattan, man, it was awesome.' Seth speaks at Ryan but they don't talk and Ryan knows it's his fault but he's busy working and packing and attending holiday Newpsie events with Kirsten and Sandy and Seth. And he knows it isn't any kind of an excuse but he figures it's too far gone now, damage done.

So they act all normal in front of the parentals, play video games but they don't talk. Ryan has no idea what exactly has gone on with Seth in the months since he left Newport Beach and Seth doesn't make it a point to find out what Ryan's been up to, either.

Ryan leaves for Pennsylvania three days after Christmas, despite Kirsten and Sandy's objections. The semester starts on January eighth and he wants time to drive there - no way in hell he's flying - and to get settled into the dorm. They hug him and send food with him and help him pack his Jeep. Seth gives him a non-committal wave as he pulls out of the driveway.

Ryan tries not to brood about it. For at least three states anyway.

...

Ryan makes it to Pennsylvania in four days, arriving on New Years Eve. It is fucking cold and he kinda regrets his decision to go to school here for four fucking years. But then he pulls into the campus and forgets the slick roads and the fact that he might be rooming with a penguin because really, the campus is fucking gorgeous and no one here knows him, knows his story, or knows Seth.

He really, truly has a clean slate.

...

He had registered at Berkeley with a major in Architectural Engineering. He's undeclared now. He takes a bunch of intro courses, including an eight am Intro to Sociology that his roommates declare him a masochist for taking. ‘No one takes eight am classes, man' they say, stoned or whatever the fuck they are. Ryan figures he can't wait until this semester is over so he can get some new roommates. His Sociology professor is the head of the department and wears the same Pink Floyd shirt to every class. His lectures never make any sense and Ryan nearly falls asleep in every one but he still manages to pull an A on the first quiz.

It's January seventeenth and as he's leaving Blackington Hall to head back to his dorm room until his Intro to Psych class at ten, he pauses to hold the door open for the girl walking out behind him. She is wearing a white coat with a hood and some kind of boots over her jeans, messenger bag littered with buttons and pins and Ryan's suddenly reminded of Seth.

Even more so when the girl turns her head to thank him and he's standing face to face with Anna Stern.

...

Anna makes him take her to Starbucks for a Chai Tea Latte, talking him into skipping classes the rest of that day so they can catch up. Ryan just goes along with it and waits for the inevitable 'how's Seth' question to come out of Anna's mouth. She rambles on during the long walk to his Jeep, about how most of her friends had decided to come to Johnstown and how much they'd all hated it and how IRONIC it was that UPJ had been her last choice for a school but she'd fallen in love at first sight with the campus. Ryan had kinda smiled at that and said 'I know' and she'd smiled back. Ryan had always liked Anna, probably because even though she was a girl and he really normally didn't do friendships with girls, she wasn't like any other girl he'd ever met.

She was more like Seth than anything. But Ryan pushed that thought from his mind and concentrated on driving the short distance to Starbucks.

They sat in the warm store, by one of the windows facing the highway and the shopping center across the way and she asked him about his classes, his roommates, what kind of music he was into, had he gone to see that band, Giants of Science, at the Living and Learning Center last weekend.

But she never once asked about Seth.

Ryan always knew she was a perceptive girl.

...

She'd gotten the whole sordid tale - or well, the tale of The Incident - out of him the Friday night after they'd bumped into each other with her feminine wiles and a bottle of Jose Cuerva. There wasn't much to do in Johnstown in the winter but drink or study and they'd had enough of the latter already. He’d laid on her bed and told her everything and she'd just listened. After he was done, realizing that was the most he'd said to anyone in longer than he cared to remember, she slowly turned her head on the pillow they were sharing and looked him in the eye. She'd said that she knew Seth and she knew Ryan and they had too strong of a bond to let this get between them. 'It'll work out,' she'd said and Ryan wanted to believe her.

They'd laid there the rest of the night, in the semi darkness of her dorm, the only light coming from her purple Christmas lights strung around the room and her TV and watched a bunch of John Hughes movies.

...

By the first week of February, he's fucking Anna. It's not a relationship, as she is happy to point out repeatedly. It's just... a thing between friends. She finds most of the boys there just. Not for her and she says she knows Ryan and knows he's a good guy so the whole friends with benefits thing is alright. He smiles wryly and argues that he's not so sure. She pauses in the middle of pulling on her tights in his dimly lit room. Raises an eyebrow. 'You're a good guy, Ryan Atwood. Trust me on this.'

He knows she's referring to the whole Seth thing but refuses to talk about it anymore. Anna doesn't push him. She does, however, drag him around to the free shows they have at the Living and Learning Center with crappy student bands even Seth wouldn't be caught dead listening to. She makes him take her home to Pittsburgh on weekends and they walk around downtown and go to the Warhol Museum and eat at Primanti Brothers in the Strip District and one night in March, she takes him to see "Killer Clowns From Outer Space' at The Oaks.

They go out with her friends from high school, to this restaurant called Kings and eat fries and ice cream and smoke and drink coffee until the wee hours of the morning. Anna will straddle Ryan's lap in his Jeep in her driveway when they get home, right after he turns off the ignition, her parents asleep in the house in front of them. The first time she‘d done that, he’d put up a token resistance but has since learned to just give in to Anna.

He's also learned she’s suddenly become his best fiend, a place he'd always reserved for Seth and he kinda gets irrationally angry with her about it. She has no right to replace him, he thinks. But then he realizes that Anna wouldn't be able to replace Seth if Ryan wasn't... Ryan.

So he tries to forget about it and just goes along with the… flow or whatever. It makes the time pass and honestly? Ryan actually enjoys himself most of the time.

...

Before he knows it, the semester is almost over and he's cramming along with the rest of the school for finals. It's the end of April and suddenly, he's walking out of his Western Civ final on a Friday and he realizes the dorms close in three days and the semester is over.

Which means the semester at Brown will soon be over too.

And Ryan and Seth will both be in Newport Beach for months.

Ryan suddenly feels even more anxious than he did before he took all his tests.

...

Anna sees him off that Sunday as she packs her own car to head home to Pittsburgh for the summer. She gives him a hug and a kiss and whispers in his ear that he better have his shit together by the time she sees him again in August or she's driving his ass to Rhode Island herself.

Ryan sighs and hugs her back, knowing she isn't bluffing.

He takes six days to drive back to California.

....

When Ryan gets back to Newport, he finds out that Seth has taken an internship in Boston and that that means he won't be home until the beginning of June. He tries to tell himself he's not happy but he is. He feels bad about being happy about being able to put off the whole messy, inevitable talk they need to have but he does.

It's been almost a year since he and Seth were copasetic and that thought, when Ryan is standing in the kitchen starting at the calendar the morning after he arrives back in Newport, is what makes his happiness from putting off The Talk about The Incident slide from just that - happiness - to regret. He missed a whole year with his best friend in the whole world because he was a fucking coward.

He sits down at the counter and broods. He may have told himself he put if off for tons of other reasons but what it boiled down to was Ryan Atwood was a pussy when it came to telling Seth Cohen he had feelings for him. LIKE THAT. And that what happened in the pool house that night wasn't so bad and you know, maybe they could have a repeat performance sometime?

Ryan spends the rest of May brooding about what to say to Seth to make it right.

....

May is the longest fucking month ever, Ryan decides on the thirty-first. It's after midnight so technically it's the first and Seth will be home by this time tomorrow but Ryan isn’t in the mood for semantics.

He tosses and turns and finally falls asleep around three. He is sleeping so sound that Kirsten doesn't wake him when they go to the airport to get Seth. He wakes up around noon, groggy and hair standing up on end. He rolls over and spots Seth, sitting in the chair in the corner. He sits up, mouth opening and closing in what he's SURE is the most unattractive way ever and tries to think of something to say.

Seth stands up and in a weird mimicry of that night almost a year before, he pushes Ryan back on the bed and straddles him.

"Dude," he says, looking and sounding like Ryan's Seth for the first time in Ryan couldn't tell you how long. "We need to talk."

Ryan can only nod weakly, his hands developing minds of their own as they settle on Seth's lean hips. Seth smiles and Ryan finds himself smiling back.

"So, uh. Listen. I kinda punked out on you for oh, the last year or so. Not cause, ya know, you're a bad lay or anything because I can honestly say, Ryan - BEST GUY I've ever had. But, well. you're also like, the only guy I've ever had, not to mention kinda my brother and you know, you were all messed up last summer and well. Not the best timing but. Well. We were all kinda messed up last summer but. I mean, it's not like it was a total surprise, right? We’ve had this whole unresolved sexual tension thing going for awhile now and you know, some people might consider it creepy but whatever. Some people are crazy," Seth paused in his spiel and Ryan found himself smiling for the first time in a long time, a real smile. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed Seth-babble. "So I guess what I'm trying to say is... The ball's in your court, dude or... some other sports metaphor that I don't know. We can... do this. Or we can go back to just being Seth and Ryan. Your call."

Ryan's only answer is to pull Seth into him for a kiss. Seth laughs against his lips and falls down to lay beside him.

Ryan pulls back and takes a deep breath, arm around Seth's shoulders again.

He knows they have a lot to talk about, more things to work out and Ryan has a sneaking suspicion he needs to give Anna a call but for now he's content to just lay there and listen to Seth ramble about Brown and Rhode Island and whatever else comes into his head.

The rest will work itself out later. Ryan is positive of that. It always does.


End file.
